More Harry Hogan stories!
Harry was sitting back in his chair, feet upon the desk, hands clasped behind his head, when Bertie walked into the office. With a grin on her face, she closed the door as quietly as possible and clapped her hands loudly, expecting him to jump. Instead, he slowly lowered his feet and sat upright. “Good morning, Blackett.”
“I don’t believe it… you… you were asleep on the job.”
“Not quite. I heard you drive up.”
“Drat! I can never catch you off-guard.”
He laughed. “My training and years of practice are too much a part of me. I sleep with one eye and both ears open.”
“I’m starting to believe it,” she grumbled.
“Keep trying.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Headache?” Bertie asked. “That’s unusual for you.”
“Nothing serious. I was up half the night, going over some reports Bruce gave me, and some old records too. You’ll love this one.” He handed her a folder.
She opened it and began scanning down through the first page. Then she looked up. “Mr. Stack found more bones? Is this right?”
“To be precise, apparently he has found pieces which he thinks might be bone… because he says they look like the others he found, just smaller.”
“Did Detective Parkins check it out? Or did he just hand it off to you?”
Harry grinned. “To be fair, he did go check out the site but feels certain it’s nothing recent. And I’m afraid anything historic doesn’t hold his interest. Nor do they have time to check these things. So he told Benny he’d get in touch with me.”
“Okay, so what’s the next step?”
Harry rubbed his chin. “I thought we might go over everything we learned from the last time, just to refresh our memories.”
“Makes sense to me,” Bertie said, nodding. “Perhaps we should look at the history of that Gated Community again.”
“We found their cemetery… do you think they had another one?”
“I think all the burials in that one were due to the Spanish Flu… Professor Jones could verify that.”
“Okay… and if that’s the case, they might have had an earlier burial site. Is that what you’re saying?”
Bertie shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think anyone knows how long they lived there.”
“That’s true.” Harry was quiet for a moment. “Suppose we go over everything we have and then go visit Benny after lunch?”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll see if I can pull up anything more on the computer, too.”
Bertie started reading through what she had found the first time when something caught her attention. “I didn’t follow up on this the first time, but there was a woman… a kind of leader… who seems to have been pretty important in the community. Listen to this…” She read aloud what she had come across.
“Can you find anything more about this?” Harry asked.
“I’ll try.” Her fingers raced across the keyboard. An hour later, she leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms up over her head. “Not much to go on, but I’ll print it for you.”
